WE go through life believing many myths and allegories fed to us from youth to be true and absolutely true. More significantly we spend the rest of our life defending and sometimes throwing punches in the defence of three basic things that we did not choose and hardly understood it when they were foisted on us; these are the names we are given, the religion we are born into, and our place of birth.
Society has grown to accept many illusions basically because perception is a powerful force. And once our perception says so, or the perception of our superiors and elders says so we accept whatever it is hook line and sinker.
It is in appreciation of the foregoing that I thought I should share with the matured mind a piece written by one Luke Miller and posted by EWAO, an Enlightenment Forum. It promises to be a Sunday delight.
5 Societal Illusions We Accept As Reality
Why do we accept some illusions as facts, when in reality they are not needed for our survival.
A lot of the world we see around us is an illusion. If you take any piece of solid matter and put it under a microscope it loses its solidity. If you take a look at the colour spectrum, what we see compared to what actually exists is miniscule.
If you take your view of the world and compare it to the beliefs of someone else, chances are even if you have a lot in common with that person you will both have some contradictory beliefs. We have multiple religions, belief systems, schools of thought and scientific processes all claiming to be the true one, yet for every person who thinks their version is correct there are a million others who challenge it.
Food
I’m not saying food is an illusion; we all need it for our survival. It is the feeling that we are reliant on other people for our food that is illusionary. It’s only in the last few decades that most of us have become totally dependent on others for our food. In reality it is only a convenience.
People have the ability to cultivate their own food, create their own water supplies and provide all that is needed, we have just become culturally conditioned and in some cases legally restricted to believe that we are dependent on external sources.
Jobs
The reason most of us will not grow our own foods is because we are too busy at our jobs, which we go to in order to put food on our tables. I’m not saying all jobs are bad, I’m just saying that most people are working to provide things that are not needed because society deems them necessary.
If we had a cultural shift and made our individual and collective focus more on what we need and less on what we want, we could move away from the idea of being reliant on a job that does not serve us and move towards a lifestyle that does.
War
All wars have 2 sides, yet we make our side seem heroic and noble, and the other side cowardly and pathetic.
The illusion here is that we are right and they are wrong, different countries have different cultures and while there are still a lot of human rights violations going on all over the globe, there are just as many happening in the western world.
Just because we say- this is what democracy looks like; it doesn’t mean that we have the right to enforce our style of democracy on the rest of the world.
War does not serve any constructive purpose and only creates victims on both sides. You can take a look at the civilian cost of war here
Education
The current education system is a job based system where you are trained to become a part of a bigger system.
We have rigid learning enforced upon us, in subjects that are pre-selected for us and while I would argue that Mathematics and English are important to progress, outside of those subjects there is a lot of unnecessary learning going on. Education should be specialised to meet the learning needs of the children, and because it is so fixed certain groups are getting left behind. Basic skills like communication, compassion and leadership are being ignored, while we are being bombarded with more information than we can ever take in or use. You can read more about educational here
Money
What is money? Money is the biggest illusion of them all and while currently we need it to live the life we are accustomed to, it is ultimately unnecessary for our survival. Money is something that is supposed to be used for trade, ultimately giving us a better quality of life. Yet collectively money is given priority over life.
We sacrifice our air supply for money. We sacrifice our eco systems for money. Our food suffers because of money. Our health suffers for money and that is just touching the surface of the damage it causes.
Money is idolised as the true meaning of freedom, when in reality it is money that imprisons us. If you don’t have it you want it and if you do have it you don’t want to lose it.
I hope that our future can be one without money, where necessities like clean water, clean food, clean air, clean energy and a clean environment are provided to everyone and not commoditised for the benefit of a few people. But for now we have to try to use the system that we have to make a change.
Re-Where are the owners of those houses?
Chief, my own question is. Who are the owners of the skyscrapers and mansions that now dot Ikoyi. VI and now Lekki. Obviously a 20 , storey building with four apartments on each floor is not built for an exteded family. Where is the middle class to rent these places. Came back from TO to see all of them still unoccupied. Curiously asked my brother who said they were built to show off to their fellow rouge VIPs how much they can steal with.impunity. Over to you Ambode , and if you cannot touch them, let PMB know. Dr babs Sagoe
Re-You can’t be everything
Couldn’t have been better said! This could only come come from the grandmaster himself who knew his trade, excelled in it, distinguished himself in it, calved out a niche for himself in it, stood by it and is still relevant even in retirement. Little wonder you where able to give it as it was in 2009 and even more relevantly now!
Great piece. Let him whom has ears listen to the wkrds of wisdom. Let us stop this rat race craze for money and return to striving for excellence so that we may have an impactful service orriented society. We surely need ‘Value Re-orrientation’
‘A word is enough for the wise’
Funmilayo Osundolire [Mrs].